“Not long ago, a guy walked up to me in the street.

He goes: ‘ You’re James Haskell. I used to think you were a right dick. But you played really well on that Australia tour. So now I think you’re alright!’ I mean, what am I supposed to do with that?”

James Haskell is alright at rugby. He has 70 caps for England, with this month’s Six Nations set to add to that. Having won the rugby premiership with London Wasps, he travelled the world to play for Stade Français in France, the Highlanders in New Zealand and the Ricoh Black Rams in Japan. Returning to Wasps in 2012, he was part of the then England coach Stuart Lancaster’s squad for the home World Cup three years later. There he was left on the bench as the underperforming team made an early exit from their own party.

Yet under current coach Eddie Jones, Haskell is playing better than ever; a hardtackling, self-sacrificial cornerstone in the 2016 Six Nation’s grand slam. He put his 6ft 4in, 19st body on the line to such devastating effect on the tour of Australia a few months later that his red scrum-cap became a symbol of a resurgent Northern Hemisphere. And with a British and Irish Lions tour to New Zealand in the summer, this year could set the glittering crown on an already lustrous career.

Right now, James Haskell is standing on a Crewe station platform at 8.25pm on a chilly Wednesday night. An hour previously he was at the clubhouse of Crewe and Nantwhich RFC, speaking in front of an audience of 50-odd people before signing copies of his self-published book on rugby fitness. The crowd was mostly made up of balding men in fleeces and their pre-teen sons, seemingly all of whom asked for selfies after the talk.

“I’m glad you’re here to see this,” he says, gesturing to the station behind him. “To see how weird my life is sometimes. Normally, I do all this stuff on my own.

“I’m not a very social person, really. The younger boys at the club go for lunch after training or whatever. My favourite things to do are coffee and work.”

THE HARD YARDS

When MH meets Haskell, he’s not even training with the boys that much. After an operation to fix a broken bone in his big toe – the injury that saw him leave the field after 66 minutes of the second test against Australia last June – he is still rehabbing. Even for a man who calls himself gently antisocial, it seems an isolating process.

Having recently got back to running, that Wednesday afternoon sees him at Ricoh Arena, the facility shared by Wasps RFC and Coventry City football club, with only the head of physiotherapy Ali James and a physiotherapy intern for company. They grab bottles of water as they emerge from the tunnel into the empty stadium and Haskell picks out a set of stairs to the top of the lower stand. There are 50 steps and over the next 10 minutes Haskell powers up and down – the only sound the metronomic fall of his feet and the deep, controlled breaths he takes during scant rest periods. In just eight brutal weeks following surgery he has transformed from “a melted wheelie bin” into a lean 121kg human battering ram.

“It’s just great to be running again,” he says between sets, looking up from his iphone. “I hate not playing. When I wasn’t selected for England U16s, I was gutted. My dad told me I could either give up, or come back stronger the following year. I asked a family friend for some advice on lifting weights and I haven’t looked back.”

Squeezed into a train seat on the way back to his house near Rugby in Warwickshire, which he shares with his girlfriend of three years, Chloe Madeley, he wolfs down a ham sandwich and a packet of crisps, before diligently logging the barcodes into Myfitnesspal.

“The amount of training I do each day, on top of all this running around, means I need to be taking in about four-and-a-half thousand calories a day, just to maintain my weight. So, yeah, I eat the right stuff. But sometimes, I just really need to eat.”

Arriving home at 9.30pm, Madeley has the right stuff ready – chicken with rice, green beans and asparagus. For her part, as a fitness enthusiast and entrepreneur, she has worked out twice today around meeting her schedule. As Haskell eats, she scrolls through her much-followed feeds. A particular troll has raised her hackles; the thorny issue of social media-fuelled personalities being self-promoted targets for criticism is not lost on either of them.

“I realise I’ve opened Pandora’s Box…” he says, adding hot sauce to his rice. “As athletes, we don’t critique fans. But after being lambasted for something you’ve done in a game and getting 200odd messages telling you you’re shit, I would say, ‘ Your cheering is shit!’”

With his plate cleaned he slides his phone to Madeley to check his macros. “Oh my god, you had crisps!” she screams. “I see everything! It’s OK, you’re in your macros. You’ve got some protein left,

“I ASKED FOR SOME ADVICE ON LIFTING WEIGHTS AND I HAVEN’T LOOKED BACK”

actually, but only eat if you’re hungry.”

He is hungry. She makes him some chocolate protein oats and he eats them standing by the sink as they discuss tomorrow’s agenda. It’s his day off from training but his schedule is busy and bizarre: a morning meeting before an afternoon driving dumper trucks…

“He does too much,” say Madeley. “It’s non-stop. A day with him and I get so tired my eyes start to itch.” She turns to Haskell: “You’ve got to rest, babe.”

PLAYING THE FIELD

James Haskell does not rest. Outside his rugby commitments – four training sessions a week with Wasps and a match, with trips abroad for European Challenge Cup weekends, England camps and games during the Six Nations, the annual Autumn internationals and possible involvement with the Lions this summer – his personal ventures are myriad.

His brand, James Haskell Health and Fitness, sells his own range of supplements, clothing, training books and equipment, all propelled by posts on Instagram, Twitter and his own Youtube channel, Bodyfiretv, which currently boasts just over 35,000 subscribers and is home to training advice, nutritional tips and, of course, the odd bit of banter. He has put his name behind products as diverse as coffee beans, tiny swimming trunks and shooting clothing, and is a regular on the after-dinner speaking circuit. He DJS at clubs, bars and private parties. His front room is full of spare kit and books for autographing. He has recently become a certified barista.

At nine the next morning he is in the function room of a local pub, meeting with the UK rep and international training expert of Compex, an electrical muscle stimulator purporting to improve recovery and performance. Haskell has been using it on his injured foot in an effort to speed up his rehabilitation.

Now topless, pads are attached to his body as he is given a tutorial on all the possible applications of the product. When the electrodes are switched on, the expert (whose glasses, long hair, thick Dutch accent and maniacal grin do little to normalise the scene) pushes Haskell through a series of movements. As the mad professor cranks up the intensity of the stimulation, the England rugby player – hopping up and down on one foot, half-naked in the back room of a pub at 9.15am on a Thursday morning – begins to laugh uncontrollably. In between the demonstrations, Haskell asks questions about the proper use of the machine; how